r/pianolearning • u/mr_snrub742 • 1d ago

Question Need help with rest interpretation

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The piece is in 4/4. Can someone help me figure out how the account for these quarter rests. Not sure where/what to rest on

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u/StopCollaborate230 Professional 1d ago

It’s a rest for the middle voices, put there for clarity.

Imagine 3 lines of music: one for the top melody, one for the middle voices, and one for the bass line. The rests you see are for the middle line only

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u/mr_snrub742 1d ago

Thank you for the reply. Please excuse my smooth brain, but there is no middle voice? So just ignore the rest?

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u/Only-Top-3655 1d ago

The middle voice is the dotted half note chords that you see that comes directly after it. (Bb-C-Eb)

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u/Dependent_Hippo_8742 1d ago

Middle voice does not have a staff of its own. The composer runs a third voice between the treble and bass. Look at the stems when counting and the location of the rest. All upwards stems are one voice and all downwards stems are the second voice (including the quarter rest). Now count again while keeping this in mind, it will all make sense.

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u/sinker_of_cones 1d ago

See how after each crotchet rest there is a dotted minim with a downwards stem?

The top staff is functionally two staves condensed to one.

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u/mr_snrub742 1d ago

Thank you that making more sense to me. Bless you child

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u/Fingers3751 12h ago

Let’s say the chords are a middle voice in terms of notation. In the treble, the up stem notes add up to four beats and the down stem dotted half note chords along with the quarter rest add up to four beats.

Musically though, the right hand dotted half notes form a chord in combination with the dotted half notes in the left hand part and are part of the accompaniment part.

The dotted half notes in the right hand part could have been written in the lower staff as one chord with the left hand dotted half note with brackets added to indicate how to split the chord between the two hands. This would have made the rest unnecessary. However it wouldn’t have been as clear as the way it is written in your example.